NASA Upgrades Weather Research Supercomputer 71
Cowards Anonymous writes "NASA's Center for Computational Sciences is nearly tripling the performance of a supercomputer it uses to simulate Earth's climate and weather, and our planet's relationship with the Sun. NASA is deploying a 67-teraflop machine that takes advantage of IBM's iDataPlex servers, new rack-mount products originally developed to serve heavily trafficked social networking sites."
Big Question: (Score:4, Interesting)
...what are they doing to improve the algorithms used to calculate the results? And if they're transparent (e.g. open for public inspection) - bonus!
(yes, I know that there are only a few folks in the Human race that would even know how to read the things. That said, it would be nice to have something educational, and at the same time open for public scrutiny so as to avoid political accusation, you know?)
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I know that there are only a few folks in the Human race that would even know how to read the things
That sounds like just the kind of challenge that can motivate any slashdotter into becoming an armchair mathemagician.
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In the Greek mathematical Forum
Young Euclid was present to bore'em.
He spent most of his time
Drawing circles sublime
And crossing the pons asinorum.*
wait, you said armchair mathemetrician, right?
*not my poem [virginia.gov].
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I would like to think that in addition to throwing more hardware at the problem, that the folks are smart enough to update the algorithms as much as they can. I would be curious, as well, to the general concepts behind their implementation.
Re:Big Question: (Score:5, Informative)
Open models are imperative (Score:5, Interesting)
Faster does not mean better. I'd rather have less iterations per day on a good model than many of a crap model.
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What makes you think they are not? Anyone can download the both the source and the detailed documentation for any of the current or previous generation models. We use a coarse resolution, but full physics model when we teach climatology. You can go to www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models to download, compile and test on your own the current generation climate model. You may choose to reduce the resolution to shorten up the run times, but that's up to you. This openness is contrast to The Viscount Monckton of Benchley's
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Well, as long as the simulation doesn't go slower than the weather itself. Sounds silly, but it's a relevant point.
Seems there may be a limiting factor (Score:2)
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Who needs models? Just call the Russians and ask them.
Other Big Question: Is this NASA's job? (Score:3, Insightful)
No wonder they're not getting anywhere replacing aging shuttle fleets if they are playing with rubber ducks and earth climate modelling.
Re:Other Big Question: Is this NASA's job? (Score:5, Informative)
From the National Aeronautics and Space Act (which authorizes NASA and its activities):
(d) The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:
(1)The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;
(4)The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes;
(5) The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere;
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Thank you for looking it up and posting it. I know most people think NASA just does airplanes and spaceships, but that'd be a sad and narrow scope for an agency that is charged with not only doing missions one we're in space, but with getting through the atmosphere in the first place.
Problem is, those airplanes and spaceships gotta get off the earth. And to do that, they often fly through weather - so yes, it's part of NASA's purview. In fact, the Marshall Space Flight Center often provides imagery of the m
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They must have some pretty advanced counting methods over there at NASA. Either that or they royally screwed up the 1, 2, 5 -- no 3! gag from Holy Grail.
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(1)The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;
Still, NASA should be launching the satellites that collect the data. NOAA should be crunching the numbers.
This only reaffirms my belief that there needs to be a massive restructuring of our government. There are 16 intelligence agencies. [wikipedia.org] 16! How does the Director of National Intelligence [wikipedia.org] keep track of it all?
How does one coordinate a government this big? I guarantee there are multiple government agencies working on the same projects, while some projects get left behind because no single agency has
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Probably another supercomputer.
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perhaps NASA conducts so much peripheral research because there's no dedicated government agency for general scientific research.
i know that we have the NOAA for atmospheric research, but perhaps there needs to be an overarching government agency for scientific research in general. NASA, NOAA, and probably NIST would be branches or departments under such an agency. and all research that is pertinent to our societal advancement, but does not have a dedicated agency such as NASA or NOAA, would be conducted un
Too many administations (Score:2)
NOAA=National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
Administrations are just that: administrations, run by administrators - primarily to the advantage of amdinistrators. Adding another level of administration won't fix that.
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Is this really NASA's job? Isn't there some other organisation in USA that does weather prediction etc?
No wonder they're not getting anywhere replacing aging shuttle fleets if they are playing with rubber ducks and earth climate modelling.
The parent post was not insightful.
Anything that can effect aviation and spaceflight is critical to understand. Furthermore their charter charges them with not only understanding these phenomena, but also to advance scientific knowledge for applications in these arenas.
Re:Big Question: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Big Question: (Score:4, Informative)
Lots of the models are open. There's a nice site at: http://modelingguru.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]
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No, no, no!
This is slashdot and the big questions are:
does it run Linux?
FTFA:
IBM said its new server, which runs Linux and is based on Intel's quad-core Xeon processors
W00t!
Can you imagine a Beowolf cluster of these things and can you give me a car analogy of how fast these things run?
I, for one, welcome our new IBM iDataPlex overlords.
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This is slashdot and the big question is: does it run vista?
In Soviet Russia, supercomputers simulate you !
There, fixed it for you.
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we need a +1 brilliant sarcasm.
but really.. can it play crysis? all else is unimportant!
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...or for the gamers, try this game! [download.com]
Pong + Fluid Dynamics = fun! Be sure to try the sandbox mode!
Well how long? (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean that the forecasting simulation for tomorrow's weather will run in less than 24 hours?
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While there may be no Blue Screen of Death, it does appear that it is a Big Blue [wikipedia.org] planet.
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Forecast, not predictions.
Learn the difference. And compared to 30 years ago, they are a lot more accurate.
Coincidence? (Score:2, Funny)
NASA Engineer: "You know, chief, I've been thinking. I bet we could just about triple the performance of this thing if we supercooled it."
Manager: "Super what?"
Engineer: "Chilled it to absolute zero, like in the large hadron supercollider. Speeds up the electrons."
Manager: "What would you need to do that?"
Engineer: "Oh, I don't know, maybe... a ton of liquid helium?"
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GPGPU (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't count the same way. (Score:4, Interesting)
When an xhpl score says '67 teraflops' and nVidia/AMD gpus spout off about the ludicrous number of gigaflops they have, it simply isn't the same.
For example, the PS3 variant of the Cell processor claims 410 gigaflops. It's hpl score, however, would be about 6-9 gigaflops. Even the new cell processors 'only' get 200 gigaflops by xhpl count.
32-bit precision scores aren't comparable directoly to 64-bit operations.
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Even with chaotic systems, and especially with systems where physical laws, especially conservation of energy and momentum, things are pretty predictable for certain time ahead. Chaos comes from uncertainities adding up, until finally that flapping of butterfly can be deciding factor of hurricanes direction. But once a hurricane is moving in a direction, it has a lot of energy and momentum, and it'd take a motherload of butterflies working togheter coordianted to change it's direction... Or one really big [wikipedia.org]
Yeah, but will they.... (Score:2)
It only tripled? (Score:1)
Recursive... (Score:1)
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climateprediction.net (Score:1)
Isn't this small potatoes to the power of the distributed project climateprediction.net?
duke out
Turf War? (Score:1)
Not to knock NASA (I'm rather fond of them), but what are they doing in the weather prediction biz, anyway? Last I checked, weather and climate studies were in NOAA's domain.
Cross-agency collaborations are great and appropriate, but in general I'd just as soon see NASA's budget dollars stay invested in space research.
Eeek (Score:4, Informative)
iDataPlex? Really? I am a tester at IBM. We've just started to qualify various hard drives and IO cards for the iDataPlex systems. They're very oddly designed and in general suck. The firmware (BIOS/uEFI) is really crappy but it usually is at this stage of testing. I'm sure it will get better over time. The thing that most likely will not get better is the horrible, horrible physical design (which was specially request by Facebook). I would say the reason is unknown, but from what I've heard it's because Facebook didn't want to upgrade their racks/rails so they had IBM design servers to fit them.
There's lots of curious and pointless design features. They're almost like big-ass blades, designed to slide out of a larger outer-housing that contains the PSU and fans, but several cables and wires connect the machine to the outer-housing making it impossible to remove without also removing the outer-housing from the rack. In one variant, the pci-slot is literally in the middle of the system (imagine a card slot in the middle of your motherboard, that, when a card is inserted into it, acts as a locking bar).
All the ports are in the front of the system: vga, usb, ethernet. Except for power. Power is in the back, attached to the external shell. There are also ps/2 ports (a rarity among newer servers) but they are completely blocked by the faceplate.
My overall reaction: meh.
Enjoy it while you can NASA (Score:2)
As much as I hate the thought, your funding is about to go bye bye.
For proper comparison (Score:1)